Celluloid Dreams - 28 Weeks Later

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by Shadowmancer | Nov 12 2007

I’m a little late to the party, I know. We finally got a chance to see 28 Weeks Later tonight.

Wow. Despite the much larger cast of characters, it actually succeeds in being bleaker than the original 28 Days Later, and almost as bleak as Children of Men.

I’ve heard the differences between Days and Weeks compared to those between Ridley Scott’s Alien and John Cameron’s Aliens, and I’d say that’s pretty much spot on. Exchange the infected in 28 Weeks Later with xenomorphs, and you’ve got a pretty good run at Aliens, down to the similarities between Doyle and Hicks… Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton, the most amazing name I’ve heard in a while) even kind of reminded me of Newt.

Anyway… Most of the movie worked very, very well. It left me feeling a bit like someone had punched me in the stomach. I think Danny Boyle’s choice to skip the flashpoint of infection, and instead start us off a month after the (localized) apocalypse was the right move to make. It avoided a lot of the tropes we’ve come to expect when dealing with zom— er, infected, without robbing us of the visceral shock of the world-shattering shift that Danny (the always-excellent Cillian Murphy) experiences when he wakes in the hospital.

This time, we see the flashpoint. In the first film, they talk about being at the train station when an infected gets into the crowd. It was a terrifying thing to imagine. When we see something similar in this movie, I was already so affected by the original reinfection that I was almost overwhelmed.

I would compare the Code Red scenes in 28 Weeks Later, for sheer horror, to the first ten minutes of Saving Private Ryan. I can’t watch that scene, and while I’m not sure these scenes are quite that affecting, they did make me feel a little sick.

The one problem I did have with the film was simply that I distanced myself from the characters fairly quickly. Perhaps it wasn’t long enough to really get attached, or maybe I just watched too many pivotal characters die too quickly, but I ended up feeling a bit numb toward the characters. Sometimes you need a bit of lightness, to contrast the dark: the first film had its picnic and play, between the fights for survival. This one never had a light moment, and I think it suffered for it.

It’s still an excellent film, and I’m going to give it a seven.

Rating: 7/10
Tags: review, movies, zombies, 28 weeks later, infected

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